The choreographer Reggie Wilson often finds the ideas for his dances while on a journey. Like an anthropologist, he conducts field research, traveling to places that interest him. Ideas lead to other ideas and accumulate in clusters before he translates them into sensual, structurally complex performances. So it’s a nice joke that near the start of “Moses(es),” a thrilling work that had its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater on Wednesday, Mr. Wilson comes upon a huge pile of tinsel that he methodically stuffs into a red wheelie suitcase. He gets it all in.

Research for “Moses(es)” involved trips to Israel, Egypt and Turkey. Mr. Wilson read Zora Neale Hurston’s “Moses, Man of the Mountain,” which retells Exodus as a black Southern folk tale. He looked into Ron Eglash’s studies of African fractal geometry. “Moses(es)” makes references to all that: exodus, diaspora, slavery, freedom, recursive form in history and dance and music, the acts of leading and following. Mr. Wilson gets it all in.

But “Moses(es)” isn’t a lecture. It’s a dance, with Mr. Wilson eight more marvelous members of his Fist & Heel Performance Group costumed by Naoko Nagata in the color associated with the sea Moses parted. (Mr. Wilson is in white, with red sneakers.) The dance vocabulary is rich: wide squats, jumps that spin and kick, Egyptian poses, arms rippling like bulrushes, heavy steps.

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Members of the Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group in “Moses(es).”CreditChester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

The movement is wonderfully loose, but the structure is strict, layers carefully packed, not stuffed in. The work offers variations on leading and following: dancers line up, pile up, push and pull, take turns; a phrase moves down the line, breaks into canon form in six parts. All the motifs recur. Fractal geometry — patterns repeated at different scales — is bewilderingly evident.

Mr. Wilson draws attention to the fractals with a voice intoning patterns (“AA, BB, CC,” etc.). Yet those vocal patterns become rhythms. More than the research or the sardonic commentary of the disco balls in Jonathan Belcher’s lighting or even the dancing, music is the manna of

“Moses(es).”

When Mr. Wilson is stuffing the suitcase, we hear Louis Armstrong sing “Go Down, Moses.” That spiritual keeps returning in different forms, joined by “Eli, Eli (Somebody Call Eli)” and “Wade in the Water.” There’s also klezmer, calypso and a thumping house track by Aly Us — an occasion for freestyling — with lyrics that speak of following the singer to the place where we can be free.

The recorded music is brilliantly arranged. (When the lyrics mention the horses of the Pharaoh or the slave catchers, we hear their galloping approach.) Even better, though, is the live singing and rhythm making by Mr. Wilson and his dancers. Mr. Wilson’s gospel cry stands up next to the recorded voices of the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Everyone knows the power of this music. (This is, after all, the season of Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations” at City Center.) While Mr. Wilson’s abstraction strips the spirituals of sentimentality and the crust of overfamiliarity, the music invests the abstractions with emotion, floating the dance through parts that feel like wandering the desert. “Moses(es)” isn’t always easy to follow, but you can trust Mr. Wilson and the music to lead you through.